Oppimus Tuck

I heard Charles mutter something behind me. I heard Jacqueline mutter something back. I didn’t look at either of them. The whole damn hospital could be standing behind me raging war on my personality and I wouldn’t care. I was looking into Tanner’s eyes. No one else mattered.

I’m not naive or inexperienced enough about children to think Tanner comprehended the enormity of his mother’s words, but I’m not lying when I say they sheared straight through my heart. A hot lump filled my throat. I continued to smile at him, my head spinning.

“Can you say daddy?” Amanda said.

He looked up at her and grinned. “Mommy.”

I laughed. Before I could stop myself, I touched his toes.

He swung back to me, consternation on his face, and pulled his foot away from my hand.

“Hi Tanner,” I said again. Croaked it actually. What was the deal with my throat? My voice? “How’re you going?”

What a stupid bloody question. How was he going? What the fuck was wrong with me?

“I mean,” I went on. It’s safe to say I was completely flustered. “I know how it’s going, but I … I … yeah, I’m your father. I know you have no idea what I’m talking about, I mean, who the hell, sorry, who the heck … Actually that’s not better … What I’m saying … Jesus, what am I …” I stopped. I drew in a slow breath and let it out just as slowly. “G’day, Tanner,” I said once more, smiling. “I’m glad to finally meet you.”

Above our heads, Amanda chuckled. “Oh, Bren … you are gorgeous.”

I flicked her a look, my smile still on my lips. “Shush. I’m doing a bang-up job of creating an awesome first impression with my son here.”

She chuckled, a warmth and happiness in her eyes I hadn’t seen since I touched down. “That you are, Osmond.”

Returning my attention to Tanner, I attempted another touch of his toes. They were so small and yet their length spoke of an impressive future stature. Okay, that’s probably completely ridiculous, but I was instantly and irrevocably in love with my son. How could I not be?

This time, Tanner didn’t pull his foot away. This time, he watched me touch his big toe. Watched me give it a little tickle. He giggled at me.

Holy fuck, nothing could ever compete with that.

I was gone right there and then. I mean, I’d already decided I was going to be the best dad ever before I’d met Tanner, but at the sound of his giggle directed at me, the monumental shift of my entire existence, my entire purpose, damn near knocked me on my arse. The fact that I knew this delighted, happy giggle came from a very sick little boy, only made me love him all the more.

Yes, just like that I loved him. Feel free to roll your eyes now, but it was the truth. I don’t do things half measure. Go hard or go home, remember, and I wasn’t going anywhere.

What I was doing was grinning at my son. And crying. Damn it, my cheeks were wet. When the hell had I started crying? When the hell did I ever cry? I don’t cry. Not because of some macho, tough-guy bullshit reason, but because the world is too incredible to waste energy crying.

But here I was, crying. Weeping at the marvel of my son, sitting there on his mother’s lap, watching me. Swiping at my eyes with the back of my hand, too choked up to say anything, I touched Tanner’s toe again.

He giggled again, this time leaning forward on Amanda’s lap to tap me on the cheek.

“I think he knows you already,” Amanda murmured. “He’s normally a little more stand-offish with new people. Especially since … since coming here.”

She was smiling down at Tanner, an expression somewhere between sorrow and joy on her face. Like me, her cheeks were wet.

“He’s beautiful,” I said truthfully.

A soft laugh, more a sob really, fell from her and she met my gaze. “He is.”

Tanner tapped my face again with another giggle.

I looked at him again. The sight of the tube inserted into his little nostril tore at something in me I didn’t understand. A powerful mix of fury and love. I wanted to tell him I was going to make everything better. The promise welled through me with equal force.

I bit it back. I’m an eternal optimist, but I’m also a student of the human body. I’ve got letters after my name that prove I know a thing or two about how the body works, even if only on a physical level, but those letters and the years of study that earned them were enough to silence my promise. I knew what leukemia was, what it meant. Tanner was not going to get better with a change of diet, three cross-fit sessions a week and daily meditation. Tanner wasn’t going to get better without more chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. Maybe not even then.

Fuck. It hit me. It hit me hard.

Not even then.

What if I wasn’t a match? What if I—

“Oppimus!”

Tanner’s happy proclamation jerked me back from the edge of an abyss I’d never stared into before – bleak misery. I gave him a wide smile, still touching his toe as he waved the Optimus Prime toy he was holding. “Optimus is pretty awesome, isn’t he?”

Tanner nodded, his face lighting up. Mutual appreciation of trucks that turn into robots – the perfect mood lightener. “Oppimus tuck.” He held out the toy to me, wriggling about on Amanda’s knee. “Tuck.”

“You want me to make Optimus into a truck?” I asked, reaching for the offered robot.

“Tuck!” Tanner echoed.

“I can do that,” I said. God, I hoped I could. It had been a while since I played with toys, and if memory served me correct I’d been more a Ninja Turtles boy in my wild toddler days. I didn’t want to let my son down on his first request of me. How to suck at being a dad 101: fail to turn Optimus Prime into a truck.

Dropping my focus to the plastic blue and red robot, I turned the toy over in my hands. Okay, this looked trickier than it should, given it was a toy for a kid. “Err …”

Amanda laughed.

I raised my head and gave her an admonishing scowl, even as my lips twitched. “That’s enough from you, Mandy.”

Tanner giggled, and then wriggled about. “Tuck!”

I heard movement behind me, low talking. No doubt Charles Sinclair was weighing up my failure and adding it to his list.

What did that list look like?

1/ Gets my daughter pregnant.

2/ Deserts her.

3/ Has a degree only in Exercise and Sport Science.

4/ Unlikely to know how many sonnets Shakespeare wrote.

5/ Possibly doesn’t even know who Shakespeare was.

6/ First time meeting son wears crinkled clothes.

7/ Can’t make a simple toy – gives up on being a father.

Ignoring my brain’s attempt to derail me, I turned to the task of alien/automobile transformation. Surely there had to be a button somewhere …

“Aha!” I burst out, as – almost of its own accord – Optimus folded in on himself and became a semi-trailer. “A truck!”

“Tuck!’ Tanner cried, hands out, fingers opening and closing. “Oppimus tuck!”

Smile stretching wider, I offered the toy back to him.

He took it with an enthusiastic snatch and an enthusiastic, “Tuck!”

I laughed, smoothing my hand over his head before I realized what I was doing. The downy-soft fuzz of his hair – so short, so sparse – and the warmth of his flesh, his life, beneath my palm stole my breath away.

And then my wrist bumped against the oxygen tube that rested on his shoulder and I stopped, staring at him, undone.

He smiled at me and pressed back against Amanda’s breast. “Tuck.”

“Truck,” I agreed, although the word sounded more like a croak.

He yawned, rubbing at his eyes with his empty hand as he pressed closer to Amanda and closed his eyes. Around me, around us, the beeps and whirrs of the machines connected to him grew to a deafening soundtrack.

Amanda’s fingers gently brushed over his temple. “He’s tired,” she murmured. “That was a big event for him, sharing Optimus with you. He’s normally very protective of it.”

“Oppimus,” Tanner said, although this time it was less a jubilant cry and more a subdued mumble.

From the corner of my eye, I saw legs and feet appear at the bedside.

“Temp time, Tanner,” a gentle female voice said.

I looked up to see a nurse at Amanda’s side, holding a thermometer to Tanner’s ear. His eyes were closed. A tiny frown pulled at his fair eyebrows. His thumb was in his mouth.

I watched the nurse take the reading. Watched her make eye contact with Amanda for a quick moment. Watched Amanda’s own eyebrows dip into a frown.

Watched a tear trickle down her cheek as she lowered her face to our son and pressed her lips to the top of his head. I swallowed, my throat tight.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, keeping my voice low and calm. I wasn’t calm inside. Inside, I was a turbulent mess. I also knew everything wasn’t okay. So why the fuck had I asked?

I think because the mind clings to okay. It hopes for it. Craves it. And in situations that clearly weren’t okay, we project that craving by asking inane questions.

A firm hand on my shoulder made me flinch. I almost shouted. As it was, I lost my balance in my crouch, my right knee crunching to the cold floor.

I looked up at the owner of the hand. Chase was standing there. “Want to grab a coffee with me?”

No. I didn’t. Not at all. I wanted to stay there with my son. I wanted to know what the wordless look between Amanda and the nurse meant. I wanted to know why Amanda was crying again.

I wanted to know how I could help.

I wanted to know when I could help.

When I would be tested. When they would take my bone marrow …

“We’ll get one for Amanda as well,” Chase said. “And some chocolate.”

I blinked up at her.

She gave me a cheeky smile. It didn’t reach her eyes. “When was the last time you ate chocolate, Osmond? And I don’t mean in a protein shake?”

Amanda’s warm laughter surprised me. I gazed up to her, my chest aching at the love for her sister I saw in her eyes. Amanda had crushed me. Destroyed me. Torn me apart. Twice. But I still felt … something for her. Even if I didn’t want to. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure if that was the case either.

“It’s okay, Chase,” she said, cheek pressed to Tanner’s head. “I’d like him to stay. He did fly halfway around the world, after all.”

Chase grunted. A part of me wanted to go with her to discover what she’d intended to say to me as we bought coffee. Of course, that part suspected it would have been a warning of the highest order about how she was going to make me suffer if I wasn’t the best father ever. Chase would never hold back telling me what she thought.

With a quick grimace at me, she smiled at her sister. “Two sugars?”

“Three.”

I quirked an eyebrow. Three?

Have you ever noticed when you’re caught in a major upheaval, when your life feels like it’s a kite being tossed about in a major fucking storm, you react to small changes as if they were enormous ones? Amanda had never taken sugar in her coffee before.

She slid her gaze to me without lifting her cheek from Tanner’s. He wasn’t quite asleep. He watched me with heavy-lidded eyes, Optimus Prime clutched to his chest, his other hand resting on Amanda’s arm. “And that’s enough out of you, Bren,” she said with a small smile. “There’s nothing wrong with three sugars.”

I chuckled, rising to my feet as I did. “If you say so,” I said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

She grew still, her eyes locked on mine, her smile fading.

Crap. What the hell was I doing? The action had been so unconscious, so … so … reflexive, I hadn’t even realized I was doing it until was done.

Fuck.

“Blech.” Chase pulled a face. “I’m out of here. Mom and Dad, you’re coming with me.”

I twisted to look over my shoulder at Charles and Jacqueline still in the doorway of the room.

Charles watched me with narrow eyes. Adjusting his folded arms over his chest, he shook his head. “Think I’ll stay here. Just to make sure Osmond does as well.”

“Dad,” Amanda groaned.

“Actually, Dad,” Chase said, snaring his arm by the hook of his elbow, “it wasn’t a question. Now the Wonder from Down Under is here, we should all let Amanda make up her own mind about what happens next and who’s with her when she does.”

Charles opened his mouth, but Chase didn’t let him utter a word. Instead, she jerked his arm and pulled him from the room.

I couldn’t help but smile a little at that. He may want to stay in the room and guard his eldest daughter from whatever hurt he feared I’d bring to her, but he loved his younger daughter just as much. And for all of Chase’s bravado, she was a tiny girl. If Charles had wanted to stay put and make my life a living hell, he could have.

“We’ll be back in a little while,” Jacqueline told us. Unlike her husband, she seemed completely okay with leaving Amanda and me alone together. Although, with the nurse still in the room, making notes on the pages of charts at the foot of Tanner’s bed, we weren’t really alone.

“’Kay, Mom,” Amanda answered.

Jacqueline left.

My heart thumped faster. I turned back to Amanda, suddenly at a complete loss for something to say.

She smiled up at me. “Want to hold him for a second? While I go to the bathroom?”

Every muscle in my body locked up.

She chuckled, and then kissed Tanner on the top of the head. “Daddy’s going to hold you for a second, tough guy,” she said, the words a whisper that sheared through me. “Okay?”

“Oppimus,” Tanner murmured, opening his eyes with sleepy languor before closing them again and holding his arms out to me.

The world roared. Spun. For a second – a heartbeat – I noticed the nurse studying me, waiting. And then I slid my hands under Tanner’s armpits and lifted him from Amanda’s lap, lowering myself to the side of the bed at the same time. He weighed nothing. So light. I’ve lifted some heavy weights in my time – my personal best is two hundred and twenty kilos in a deadlift – but as light as Tanner was, lifting him was like lifting the world. I felt his weight all the way through to my very core. Or maybe it was something more significant.

Optimus Prime thunked against my back as Tanner positioned himself half on my hip, half on my lap. His hot face pressed to my chest, his free hand bunched in the cotton of my shirt. “Tuck,” he said, giving the toy a tired shake.

“Autobots, roll out,” I quoted the only Transformer phrase I knew as I adjusted myself on the edge of the bed. I was nervous the oxygen tube in his nose would get tangled in my awkwardness, would tug on his face and hurt him. Was there a trick to holding him? To not hurting him?

“Bots …” Tanner mumbled.

I knew he was asleep when his weight grew heavy and still. For one horrible, horrific moment, I was sure the room was going to flood with doctors and nurses screaming and shouting things like “get a crash cart” and all the other stuff they yell on TV shows when a patient dies. For a horrible, horrific moment, any optimism I had was stripped away by the soul-crushing fear that I’d discovered I had a son only so I could hold him while he died.

And then my brain registered his breath heating my chest through my shirt like a warm fan, and I let out a silent chuckle and rested my cheek against his head.

I was holding my son. My son was in my arms, his heart beating in his tiny body so close to mine.

I was holding my son.

“I’ll be back in a second.” Soft fingers touched my shoulder and I looked up to find the nurse smiling at me. “To get him into bed.”

“Do you want to do that now?” I asked, praying she’d say no. It was too soon. I’d only just got him, it was too soon to let him go.

“In a little while.” She walked around the bed to the other side and then raised the railing until it clicked into place. “I think being held by his daddy is more beneficial right now. For you both.”

She left before I could thank her.

I didn’t move. I stayed perched on the edge of the hospital bed, listening to – and feeling – Tanner’s deep breath. Holding him while he slept.

A soft thud behind me told me Optimus had slipped from his fingers. I brushed my cheek over the top of his head. My brain wanted to point out why he’d lost his hair, wanted to dwell on it. Wanted to imagine the pain of the chemotherapy responsible for that hair loss, for the loss of his blond Mohawk.

I refused to let it.

Banishing the tormented fears, I breathed in his smell, enjoying the way the top of his head gently slid against my cheek as he moved with my intake of air.

“So, Tanner,” I murmured, reveling in the feel of his name on my tongue, “I’m thinking we need to get some ground rules sorted out. You need to continue to be wonderful and gorgeous and completely an Optimus Prime fan. And it’s very important you keep making your mother smile. That’s your number-one job, okay?”

I paused, closing my eyes and doing nothing but existing with him for a long, glorious moment. “And I,” I whispered, drawing him a little closer, my eyes still closed, “will give you everything you need, anything you need, to be healthy. To beat this thing trying to take you away from us. I promise. You keep being wonderful, I’ll keep you breathing, okay?”

For an answer, Tanner snuggled in to my chest. My eyes welled up with tears, but there was no damn way I was taking my arms away from him to wipe them.

I’m not quite sure when it was I stretched out on his bed with him. But I did. Tucking him against my upper body, I lay on my side, resting my head on my arm and curling my legs up until they nestled against his feet.

“I’ll take you to Australia when you’re well enough,” I told him, the words barely more than a breath. “One of my old lecturers at uni is the patron of the koala enclosure at the zoo. I’ll tap a favor and get us a private visit. Your mum loves the koalas.” Another quiet chuckle left me as I remembered the first time Amanda saw the koalas at Taronga Zoo. She’d stared at them, utterly enrapt. I’d had to resort to kissing her senseless right there at the enclosure to regain her attention.

My heart quickened at the memory.

“By the way,” I went on, doing my best to deny the warmth in my heart the memory awoke, “I have a friend over here who is a koala expert. Maybe we can give Maci and Raph a call. You’d like them both. Sure, he’s a broody, grumpy pain in the ar … butt most of the time, but his sister married a prince. Reckon I could convince him to send a crown your way.”

Tracing the tips of my fingers over the exquisite curve of Tanner’s skull, I wriggled a little deeper onto the mattress and closed my eyes. “Oh and my mum, your nanna, is going to spoil you rotten. Nanna and Poppy Osmond. Did you know you have an uncle as well? Uncle Ben. He’s brilliant. Way smarter than me. And stronger. Don’t tell him I said that.”

I let the noises of the room waft over me. At some point the nurse would be back in here. I probably should have sat up. I must have looked a ridiculous sight; a six foot two, muscle-bound guy crunched up on his side in a hospital bed-slash-cot. But I didn’t want to sit up yet. I was comfortable.

More than comfortable. I was calm. And centered. And relaxed.

More than relaxed. I was chillaxed. Gravy. I was …

Okay, you probably guess what happened next, right?

Yeah, I was asleep.

When I woke – hours later, if the way my knees ached and my mouth tasted was anything to judge by – I found Amanda sitting in the chair next to the bed, her chin resting on her palm, her eyes closed.

I didn’t move. Not just because I didn’t want to disturb Tanner, who was still nestled against me, his breath a warm fan against my chest, but because I wanted the time to truly look at her. Since touching down, I’d seen her in so many guises. Conflicting, confusing guises.

I’d seen the sexy girl I’d never got over, the new tired girl with a secret. I’d seen the woman who stirred me in the most fundamental, physical way. I’d seen a deceiving stranger I didn’t want to know.

And I’d seen the mother worried about her sick child, swallowing her pride and opening herself up to a world of new pain and guilt and heartache to save that child.

My brain couldn’t align any of them.

I kept going back to the past, to when she was my Amanda and I knew her better than I knew myself. But that Amanda was gone. I don’t know if she’d faded from existence the night I told her I loved her, or if it had happened later, as she struggled with being pregnant.

Or had it happened even later? Had the Amanda I loved still been there, waiting for life to lead her back to me, until that life was forever shattered with the news Tanner had leukemia?

What was Philadelphia leukemia? Was it the reason she’d called me? I knew it was rare for parents to be donors in normal leukemia cases, but was it different for Philadelphia leukemia? If Tanner just had normal leukemia – if there was such a thing – would I be here? If a cure were available without my presence, would she have even thought to contact me?

So many questions, feeding a resentful anger in me I needed to address.

And yet, even with those questions and the bitterness they stirred, I gazed at her face and remembered doing so morning after morning, my body, my heart aching for her, craving her … loving her.

I don’t think I’d ever felt so conflicted. I hated her. And I still loved her. That was obvious. I hated what she’d done, but loved what we’d done together before she sent me away. Fuck, there was even a messed-up part of me that loved her for the fact she had sent me away. For the reason behind her decision.

And still, I hated her.

But she’d given me the little person currently asleep beside me. How could I hate her for that? I tried to imagine what I would have done in her place, but couldn’t. That kind of scenario was beyond my male mind to process or fathom.

I sighed, louder than I’d intended. Tanner drew a deeper breath, shifting a little on the bed before settling back to quiet sleep again.

Amanda opened her eyes. I watched her pupils dilate as she focused, saw the edges of her lips curl into a smile before she caught it. Giving her head a shake, she raked her hands through her hair and puffed at her fringe. “Hi,” she murmured, moving in the seat.

I held a finger to my lips, not wanting her to inadvertently wake him.

Amanda let out a soft laugh. “When he’s out like that, he’ll sleep through anything. I’ve been told kids who spend a lot of time in hospital get used to turning off noise when they sleep.”

“How many nights has he spent here?”

“Every night since he was diagnosed. Kids with leukemia have a vulnerable immune system so they need to be in a sterile environment. At first we were in a room with another child, a little girl with acute myeloid, but they couldn’t find a donor match for her and she … she died, and then they moved us to this room.”

My head whirled with the information, doing the math on how many nights Tanner had been here – at least thirty – and reminding me what the American medical system was like. Once again, my knowledge came from Hollywood – the movies and TV shows I’d seen where patients were denied care because of a lack of insurance, or hidden clauses in their policies.

An utterly irrational urge to tell Amanda we were moving to Australia – all three of us – now, slammed through me. I didn’t though, no matter how powerful. Whatever future lay before us, I didn’t need to fuck it up with an Australia-versus-America attitude.

Amanda smiled at our sleeping son. “He’s handled it so well. Being here, being sick. He doesn’t like the PICC much. It’s that needle you can see taped to his arm. It’s a central catheter they use to get his medication directly into his bloodstream without needing to repeatedly insert a needle into his vein. He doesn’t like it, but I think he’s come to understand it means less pain. At least, that’s what I keep telling him when he gets grumpy about it. He’s going to have a phobia of needles if he …” She paused. “When he’s older.”

I lowered my gaze to Tanner, skimming my hand over his head as I considered the intravenous catheter embedded in his left arm just above his elbow. Amanda was struggling to be positive. Another change in her. Her positivity had been one of the things that had drawn me to her the first time we met on the ski slopes, ignoring the base sexual lust I’d felt for her the second I’d laid eyes on her, of course. But once I’d gained control over my purely physical reaction to her, once I’d actually started to talk to her, I enjoyed the way she laughed her way through her days and nights. Even when she almost broke her collarbone on a black run, she’d laughed about it.

“Hey,” she’d said grinning at me as we waited in the emergency department of the hospital, “at least I’ve still got all my teeth.”

I’d fallen hard and fast for her, in part because she shared such a similar philosophy to life as me: it’s to be enjoyed. I could only imagine how much heartache and grief she’d been going through the past month to drain her of her positive outlook. Or how many times she’d had to watch Tanner in pain, crying …

Closing my eyes, I pressed a gentle kiss to the top of his head.

“He’s responded to chemotherapy so far,” she went on, the words a whisper, “but his leukemia is a particularly rare and vicious one. The high dose of chemo required to kill off the Philadelphia cells can also kill off his own healthy bone marrow. He needs a bone marrow transplant to give him new bone marrow. Unfortunately, with his type of leukemia, both chemotherapy and a B.M.T are required.”

She stopped for a moment, as if the words were too traumatic to say.

“The chemo has been an attempt to get him into remission for when a donor is found,” she finally said. “When Chase and Mom and Dad were ruled out …”

The room fell silent, save for the noises of the instruments surrounding us.

I opened my eyes and met hers. “When they were proved not to be a match, you called me?”

A tear slipped down her cheek. “There were other candidates. Other donors. None matched. Philadelphia is a …” A frown pulled at her forehead. “It’s like leukemia decided to fuck with itself. It’s not good enough to try to kill people by over-producing cells, it wants to turn the cells in their bodies into even more malicious abnormalities, just to say ha, fuck you, science. You think you know how to deal with cancer? Think again, fuckers …” She trailed off.

Tanner stirred at my side. Was he aware of his mother’s distress? Or was it her slightly raised voice?

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, slumping in the chair and gazing out the window. It dawned on me the room was full of bright, afternoon sunlight. The world, my world, had changed so much in the last few hours.

“For what?” I murmured back.

A soft snort left her. “For everything. But most of all, for telling you we were over all those years ago.”

Ah fuck, I wasn’t ready for her to grab my heart again. I wasn’t. Call me a coward, call me callous, but I wasn’t. So instead of telling her I was sorry for that as well, I shifted my focus to Tanner again.

And found him gazing up at me.

“Tuck,” he whispered.

“Dad,” I answered, mouth dry, throat constricting.

He looked at me with a solemnity beyond his age, and then smiled. “Da.”

I don’t know if he was saying Dad, but that short, simple sound ripped me apart. I sat up, making sure not to disturb him too much, and swung my feet to the floor. I couldn’t see. My vision was a wet blur. The colors and lights in the room danced together, garish and stinging. A small hand touched my back, at the base of my spine. Patted me over and over.

My son trying to console me? Surely to God my eighteen-month-old son who was dying from cancer wasn’t trying to console me?

“Tuck, da.” The hand continued to pat. “’Sokay ’sokay.”

“Bren?” Amanda was in front of me, sliding her palms over my wet cheeks. Lifting my face upward.

I tried to blink away the tears blinding me, tried to regain some semblance of macho control, to tap into the essential Brendon-ness of who I was.

“It’s okay, Bren,” she whispered, brushing her thumbs across the path my tears made down my face. “It’s okay. We’re going to be okay.”

Behind me, Tanner pressed his little body to my back. I could feel his hot cheek, his chest, his tummy flat against the line of my spine. A dull jab of something hard into my ribs told me Optimus Prime had joined him, once again clutched in his small hand.

“’Sokay,” Tanner repeated. Jesus, I could feel the muscles of his cheeks and jaw move against me as he spoke. I could feel his heart beating against my back. “’Sokay, da.”

Before I could stop myself, I wrapped my arm around Amanda’s waist, pulled her to me, buried my face into her body and sobbed.

No, not just sobbed. My body quaked. My heart tore. Every emotion I’d kept in check, every fraying ounce of control over my reaction to this whole horrible situation, poured from me like a damn bursting. I buried my face between Amanda’s breasts, and cried.

And the whole time, Tanner lay against my back, patting me with gentle taps of his fingers, and telling me it was ’sokay, da, ’sokay.